Finance & economics | Trump v Harris

America has a huge deficit. Which candidate would make it worse?

Enough policies have been proposed to make a call

collage featuring Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, the White House, and the Presidential Seal of the United States.
Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy
|Washington, DC

It is safe to say that neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump will win November’s presidential election by pledging fiscal prudence. The deficit and debt are afterthoughts for most Americans these days. And proposals from both candidates for cleaning up the country’s finances are fundamentally unserious. Mr Trump has talked about using cryptocurrency or drilling for oil in order to pay off the national debt—ideas that amount to utter nonsense. Although Ms Harris has vowed to reduce the deficit, she has declined to offer any substantive plan for doing so.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Trump v Harris”

From the September 7th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Finance & economics

China meets its official growth target. Not everyone is convinced

For one thing, 2024 saw the second-weakest rise in nominal GDP since the 1970s

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed speaks during the launch of the Ethiopian Securities Exchange in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on January 10th 2025

Ethiopia gets a stockmarket. Now it just needs some firms to list

The country is no longer the most populous without a bourse


Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, Japan

Are big cities overrated?

New economic research suggests so


Why catastrophe bonds are failing to cover disaster damage 

The innovative form of insurance is reaching its limits

“The Traitors”, a reality TV show, offers a useful economics lesson

It is a finite, sequential, incomplete information game

Will Donald Trump unleash Wall Street?

Bankers have plenty of reason to be hopeful